


The Void Revival

by EntropyBoiStephanie



Category: Original Work
Genre: Asexual Character, Gay Bar, Other, Short Story, Time Freeze, night club
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2019-04-23 00:46:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14320788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EntropyBoiStephanie/pseuds/EntropyBoiStephanie
Summary: This was a short story I wrote as an audition piece. I might continue it someday, but probably not.Our story begins on a normal night for our main character Molly. She is an asexual bartender at a gay night club called "The Void Revival."Well, it was normal until time stopped, and Molly was the only thing left unaffected. Or was she?Read to find out what happens!





	The Void Revival

The night started out normally for Molly; get dressed, take a shower, go to work. Simple. Simple that is, until she realized barely ten minutes into her nightly commute that none of the other cars on the highway were moving. Molly slowed her beat up Chevy to a stop and got out to examine what may have caused such an anomaly. She walked over to a blue Prius near where she had pulled over and looked into the driver’s side window. The people in the car were just sitting there, staring listlessly into empty space. Molly tried to get their attention by tapping the window but was unsuccessful in her attempts. The couple didn’t even glance at her. Dismissing the strange people in the Prius, Molly decided to check the Maserati a little behind and ended up with the same results. In fact, every car she checked had a person or two just sitting in their seats, unresponsive and seemingly staring at nothing. By now, the sun had nearly set, and Molly figured that maybe she should still go into work, just in case. After getting back into her car, Molly pulled back onto the highway and avoided the unmoving cars littering the streets.

After about twenty minutes, Molly drove into the neighboring city, where her job was. Molly was a bartender at a nightclub called “The Void Revival” which ended up being adopted as a “gay bar” for the surrounding area. Molly herself was asexual and had a keen eye for picking out who was going to start trouble that night. Usually it was seedy straight guys with no sense of boundaries trying to get into threesomes with bi girls. Molly had been the cause of several arrests of possible sexual predators from catching people trying to roofie the bar’s unsuspecting patrons. The Revival’s owner always treated her to breakfast the morning after she caused an arrest. She said it was a “thank you” to Molly for helping the bar keep up a good reputation and keeping creeps off the streets. Molly always said that it was her job as a decent human being to prevent things like that from happening, if given the opportunity. Molly reminisced about one of those times as she parked her car in the garage a couple blocks away from the nightclub. After making sure the car was locked, she set off. When she got out to the street again, Molly noticed that the city was under the same strange spell that the highway and her own town had been under. As she walked, she pondered what other places had been affected by this strange curse, what this so-called “curse” was and why she hadn’t been affected. 

By the time Molly reached the flashing neon sign boasting the club’s name, she was left with more questions than answers, which left an unsatisfied feeling swimming around in her guts. When Molly checked, she saw that the front door was open, and decided to go inside to check the place out. 

Being inside, Molly discovered, was almost worse than being outside. Because of the fact that some early patrons and other workers had been present in the club when the weird spell hit, and all were frozen in their places, it was rather disturbing, but she figured she had to test a few things out before assuming this was the end of the world or if it was just some temporal anomaly. She wandered around to different people and tried to move them into different positions. It worked for about five seconds, until they reverted to their original places.

Unbeknownst to the girl, she was being stalked by a creature of unknown origin as she searched through the club. As it followed her, the creature’s labored breath spilled from its’ lungs like a thick oil and a black tongue lolled out of its’ gaping maw. It crept slowly and silently, saliva dripping from its razor-sharp teeth. Its paws padded on the polished floor lightly, so as not to alert its’ prey to its’ presence. Molly thought she had heard a faint thumping noise, so she turned her head left and right, trying to find the source of the noise. She saw nothing, so Molly dismissed the sound as a part of her overactive imagination. She did however, keep her guard up. Considering with the strange time curse, anything could be possible. Molly refocused on her task and walked back to the employee breakroom to see if she could find anything to hint at what may have happened. Of course, she didn’t really believe she would find any evidence to what made the world around her stop, considering that this was a small town, and this was probably caused by the government experimenting. Molly remembered hearing something about a new weapon that was being tested when she was flipping through her TV looking for something to watch. Naturally she had assumed that the weapon would be a new tank or something. Perhaps that was the cause of this time freeze. Although, technically “time freeze” wouldn’t be a correct term. Time hadn’t stopped, it was all living things that had stopped. That realization made her even more curious to why she hadn’t been affected. Molly pulled herself from her thoughts and went to turn around when- 

She found herself staring into the fangs of an eldritch monster. Molly flinched and tensed up, screwing her eyes shut. Shock gripped her chest tightly, making it hard to breath. There was something else that wasn’t frozen in place? But what is it? The creature blew hot breath in her face, blowing her hair back. But she knew better than to scream. When she was a child, Molly’s mother Katrina had run an animal shelter. But not the normal kind of shelter with old, sick dogs and wild street cats. No, Katrina ran a shelter for actual wild animals, wolves and deer and foxes. So, Molly learned quickly not to make startling noises around untamed animals, as it would only escalate a situation from bad to worse. 

Molly also relaxed her tense muscles, remembering how body language can give away fear, and fear of something gives it more power over you. She slowly opened her eyes and looked into the glowing blue glaring down at her. It wasn’t so terrifying now that she took a better look at him. At least, Molly assumed it was a him. He had the head of a wolf, with the spiraled horns of a markhor. And he had the body of a deer with the tail of a scorpion. But the most intriguing part of the creature was his distinct glowing blue markings covering his body. His entire figure was black, but the shape wasn’t that well defined, as if shadows had taken the form of this creature. It was nearly twice her size and he twitched with pent up energy, the glowing blue from the foreign markings casting an eerie glow around the small room.

The eyes staring down at her seemed to be highly intelligent. They appraised her in such a way that she thought the creature might be staring into her very soul. She wondered briefly to herself what it would think if it could see her soul, she wasn’t really all that interesting. 

During her school years Molly had been a straight B student, in her school’s marching band and speech and debate club. The most interesting thing about her (according to her friends) was the fact that Molly was 26 years old and still a virgin, even though she didn’t believe in waiting until marriage. She had been called a prude on more than one occasion, but she didn’t give comments like that much thought, because she learned at a young age that people who thought like that would never be pleased. But still, she wasn’t that interesting, so why did this happen to her?

An audible crash tore the girl and the beast from their unintended staring contest. The creature whipped its head around so fast, a trail of smoky shadows followed the movement lazily. He sniffed twice, quickly. And then he shot out of the break room like a bullet, leaving Molly alone again. She let out a breath she had been unaware that she was holding. Molly briefly entertained the thought of following the mysterious animal to find out what had caused such a crash; it would surely be an adventure. However, in the end her sense of self-preservation won over her sense of curiosity and she hightailed it right out of there. 

Molly set a brisk pace as she walked back to her car. It was now fully dark out, and even with the streetlights casting a honey colored glow on the darkened buildings, it did not settle the unmitigated fear coursing through her veins, simultaneously turning her blood to fire and ice burning trails through her sweat-slicked skin. The unusually dark buildings loomed overhead, combating the welcoming glow of the street lights with wraith-like shadows that threatened to swallow all hope- and leave the city swamped in a suffocating, eternal darkness. Everything was so silent; the only noise Molly could hear were her hurried footsteps and the incessant thrumming of her erratic heartbeat. Out of nowhere, an unexplainable terror swallowed her whole, closing her windpipe tight and sending a painful burn through her entire body as she burst into a frantic sprint to get to her car. Her hair flew behind her as she ran with the speed of a cheetah, trying to outrun something she couldn’t see or hear, but Molly felt it. Her panic-stricken mind conjured up demons that nipped at her heels and monsters that reached for her hair. Frightening things that, if she didn’t get to her car fast enough, would capture her. And if they captured her… Molly could hardly bear to imagine what tortures may befall her if such a thing were to happen. 

The parking garage quickly came into her line of sight, and even though it was dark, it seemed to shine like a lighthouse in a storm. Molly began to run even faster, hope filling her limbs with new vigor. She approached the parking garage at speeds rivaling a boeing 747 taking flight. But when she was barely ten feet away, she slowed down. The darkness inside the parking garage was more intense than that of the street’s, as there weren’t any street lamps or moonlight in the garage. But this darkness was different. It seemed almost… sentient. And then it was.

Tendrils of shadow reached out from the darkness of the parking garage as Molly froze in her place. Terror clutched her heart with a vice-like grip, each thud pounding painfully against her ribcage. She could only stand there, paralyzed with fear as the darkness rushed toward her. Faintly, Molly recognized the sound of thudding feet pounding the ground. Was something running toward her? Try as she might though, Molly couldn’t regain control over her body. She was stuck, as though her fear had encased her in ice. 

With a magnificent leap, the shadow creature from before came hurtling overhead. He landed in front of Molly and let out a menacing growl from deep within his throat. The shadows from the garage halted their pursuit and wavered in place. The beast growled again, low and warning. The tendrils of shadow then slinked back to the garage where they came from, under the watchful supervision of Molly's new protector. Molly, still frozen with shock, felt numb. She then abruptly lost consciousness. After the events of the day, her body had decided to shut down and let things settle themselves. And who could blame her? Molly had been subjected to some truly terrifying things that night. And as her consciousness drifted away from her body and to a dreamland of her own creation, Molly vaguely wondered what the morning might bring.


End file.
